58 replies to this topic

[HauptmanT]

I have a hard enough time hitting mechs... forget the idea of shooting locations.

Seriously, this event dropped me down a tier my aim is so bad.

But this is a good thing, I need the practice. I'm getting better as a player using ACs. Maybe, just maybe, I'll come out of this event a beast.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

HauptmanT, on 22 September 2017 - 06:49 PM, said:

I have a hard enough time hitting mechs... forget the idea of shooting locations.

Seriously, this event dropped me down a tier my aim is so bad.

But this is a good thing, I need the practice. I'm getting better as a player using ACs. Maybe, just maybe, I'll come out of this event a beast.

Hi HauptmanT
What the Problem ?Mousesettings to high ? use a joystick?or gamepad?

[JadePanther]

if i glance a shot on an enemys leg by chance and it lights up the paper doll glowing, yeah he's getting legged in a hurry cause he skimped on the socks..

some guy walking around showing structure on a leg.. Yep he getting legged..

[The Lighthouse]

It's a bit more complicated than people would think. Legs, if not stripped, usually have more armor than side torso and pretty close to CT. Lights usually have more armors on legs than CT in this game.

For lights which speed is literally armor, you have to go legs all the time.

For assaults and slower heavies, it is far better to go for side torso, especially after engine desync which fast torso twisting is really almost impossible (or downright impossible) for these mechs. Side torso would have less armor, you will get rid of weapons, speed (not as much as legged), heat penalty or best case downright kill thanks to IS XL. Only exceptions are mechs with standard engine, which are now endangered due to Light Fusion engine.

Now, for faster heavies and mediums are where the word 'situational' can be used. In general, going for legs is good idea if:

1) It is well-exposed (one of very few things PGI did really right was the it's very hard to see complete flat terrain on maps. This really acts as natural cover for legs.)

2) You are in position which you can easily retreated from the position in case the enemy retaliates.

3) You are sure/confident that the target has probably stripped legs.

4) You are going into brawl and faces enemy front.

You really have to understand, that unlike destroying CT (kill) and destroying ST (some speed reduction, disarm), destroying legs does not make a mech worse at shooting things with exception for peaking. You really have to calculate yourself that...

1) The time for destroying one of his legs.
2) The time that he would be shooting at you when you are shooting at him.
3) Confident your mech would fare better against his firepower after you destroy his leg.

I mean legging mechs is effective, but an legged mech is still FAR BETTER than a dead mech, and most of the time it is better than a stick (except conquest). Always think about preserve your mech as much as possible while doing damage as much as possible to them.

[Roadbuster]

Antares102, on 21 September 2017 - 12:47 PM, said:

I have seen it many times that people desperately shoot well armored legs even though the torso is cored orange or something.
I agree with the OP that shooting legs is not always the best choice. Check enemy paper doll sometimes folks espcially when the enemy mech has less than 80%.

QFT!

I can't count the times I've seen people do that. Cherry red CT and they start shooting the legs.
This happens if people don't press R, for whatever reason. The stupid LRM haters encourage bad play.

I don't agreee that legs are easier to hit than torso though.
If the target knows how to keep a damaged leg behind a good one, or how to shield a leg with a destroyed leg, it can kill the tactic.
And, while there's still enough people not doing it, giving legs good armor can also kill that tactic.

There are several mechs where shooting the legs is the best way to handle them though. Lights and mediums for the most part.

I've yet to kill a mech by blowing off 1 leg. How should that kill a mech, even with ammo explosion?

[Ghogiel]

Roadbuster, on 23 September 2017 - 12:19 AM, said:

I've yet to kill a mech by blowing off 1 leg. How should that kill a mech, even with ammo explosion?

Ammo explosions only blow out the internals and ignore armor so you don't need all that much dmg, Most ammo is going to do 150-200 dmg to a side then CT which can be enough to drop assaults. A full ton of AMS iirc being the worst case scenario where it would do 10k dmg. Doesn't work on clan omnis as they have CASE in every component.

[ocular tb]

Roadbuster, on 23 September 2017 - 12:19 AM, said:

I've yet to kill a mech by blowing off 1 leg. How should that kill a mech, even with ammo explosion?

I've done it a few times, most notably on a few enemy Cataphract-4X with the 4xAC5 loadout. All that ammo has to go somewhere so it ends up in the legs and the ammo explosion ends up taking out the side-torso above the leg. I don't see them often but when I do see a Cataphract-4X I go for a leg first since I've had good success with that in the past.

[Lykaon]

When I pilot a light mech and get behind an agile opponent I will sometimes contemplate taking off a leg.

An agile but high end medium or low end heavy will frequently have enough structure to survive having it's rear armor torn up and be agile enough to not afford me a second shot into the stripped rear armor.

But,a quick alpha into a leg and quickly getting out of sight gives me a target that I can hit a second time even if they put a back to a wall. I may not even try to finish them after taking the leg off. I will tell my team where they are and they are legged and ready for clean up and move onto another target.

This is very situational and based on the mech/mech build/surrounding terrain/distance of engagement and my possitioning relative to the enemy facing and mech concentration in area.

[Vellron2005]

I only shoot legs on lights because it's basically the only way to kill them, or if a target is already legged or close to being legged.

Otherwise, always lock the target and go for the most damaged component, or whatever's smoking most ;-)

[Brain Cancer]

Roadbuster, on 23 September 2017 - 12:19 AM, said:

QFT!

I can't count the times I've seen people do that. Cherry red CT and they start shooting the legs.
This happens if people don't press R, for whatever reason. The stupid LRM haters encourage bad play.

I've yet to kill a mech by blowing off 1 leg. How should that kill a mech, even with ammo explosion?

Ammo explosion damage transfers as well. Leg -> ST -> CT. Set off ammo in the leg of an IS 'Mech, there's no CASE, so it transfers to the ST (and then CT). Easy enough for a leg to XL check for you, which means dead target. Clan robots have CASE in all locations, so ammo explosion damage never spreads.

Also, I just ended up legging an Annihilator who really shouldn't have skipped leg day. And it was good.

[Krivvan]

OP, it's nowhere near as simple as how you're describing it, and it's not a "only hit the Torso" or "only hit the Legs" situation.

Legs often get called in non-trading/poking situations where a large number of players need to target a component. This is because it's a ) harder to fully shield a leg at specific angles and b ) makes it less likely for crossfire to hit friendlies. Legs also often get called on fast movers since it's less HP required to remove to give that mech a death sentence.

Torsos often get called in trading/poking situations because a) they're often the only part of a mech that is exposed and b ) like you said, partial damage reduces firepower even if they end up shielding a bunch of shots.

And then there are mechs and situations where you're better off aiming for arms.

The decision becomes more complicated when talking about certain mechs and which armor/structure quirks they have. Some mechs have an abundance of Torso armor quirks but very few Leg quirks. Some have the opposite. There are also situations where, for example, you know the build well enough to know when legs are a good idea. For example. 4xSRM6 Assassin builds require having some SRM ammo in the legs no matter what, which makes them a prime target if your team has MG mechs in it.

Not to mention that it also matters in regards to what weapons they have. If they have nothing but short range lasers, then a leg may be less HP to go through in order to effectively disable a mech.

If you come across an opponent while they are unaware of you, then it's often better to deal some torso damage rather than legs. In a 1v1 situation, it again heavily depends on what mech you're facing. Mechs like the Assassin have an extremely easy time blocking all your shots to its Torso with its arms, which means that the Legs still often end up the better target despite it being theoretically more HP to go through.

Edited by Krivvan, 25 September 2017 - 09:14 PM.

[mogs01gt]

This is when game knowledge is your friend. When you realize that a mech is running more weapons than what that mech typically does, you know the legs are light on armor. I typically will take a shot at the leg of a mech to see how much armor is there.

Edited by mogs01gt, 27 September 2017 - 07:02 AM.

[Ziogualty]

Brain Cancer, on 21 September 2017 - 01:43 PM, said:

Legging is also pretty darn important in FP, where mobility kills often make all the difference between being rushed into a loss and farming your opponent.

It works 100% of the time in Scouting.

In the Medium/Light segment, IS mechs are bigger, with bigger legs, and we are forced to pilot heavy hitting, bulky mediums into FP because our lighter mechs has not enough firepower.
I used to Scouting a lot, but lately every premade goes for legs, making almost any game a 4-0 loss.
Small lasers + MG is all clan needs to shred IS in Scouting.

Things looks great for Clans: after the complete failure of the Uziel (mediocre in QP, awful in Scouting), now the Hellspawn: a 45 tons, Dragon-like torso, huge ears, and humongous legs.

I fear IS pilots will have to wait a long time before getting a good Scouting mech again.

Edited by Attank, 27 September 2017 - 07:57 AM.

[CFC Conky]

Attank, on 27 September 2017 - 07:39 AM, said:

It works 100% of the time in Scouting.

In the Medium/Light segment, IS mechs are bigger, with bigger legs, and we are forced to pilot heavy hitting, bulky mediums into FP because our lighter mechs has not enough firepower.
I used to Scouting a lot, but lately every premade goes for legs, making almost any game a 4-0 loss.
Small lasers + MG is all clan needs to shred IS in Scouting.

Things looks great for Clans: after the complete failure of the Uziel (mediocre in QP, awful in Scouting), now the Hellspawn: a 45 tons, Dragon-like torso, huge ears, and humongous legs.

I fear IS pilots will have to wait a long time before getting a good Scouting mech again.

Oh, I don't know, the Griffin-2N and some of the Bushwackers are still pretty good for IS scouting.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[SFC174]

There are certain non-light mechs, due to inherent hitbox advantages or general quirks that I always shoot the legs on if I have an opening. Those would be:

Crab
Bushwhacker
Stormcrow

Sometimes, its quicker to kill two legs on those mechs than it is to watch damage miraculously spread around all the other components while you shoot for CT or ST.

[panzer1b]

I rarely go for legs in QP since the average player aims for center of mass, and if you focus the legs, the damage the rest of the team did doesnt mean anything.

My priority targeting for most mechs is open/damagaed components first period (unless its a shield arm, i dont care if its cherry red, shield arms/sides just waste ammo). If i have no idea on the mech's status (ECMed or so), it really depends on geometry/hitboxes. If the mech has large STs and a difficult to hit CT, or has asymetric build where most of its firepower is on a side, ill pick a ST to focus on, and fire at that every time i get an opportunity. If it has a very large CT or has bad agility liek many assaults (say battlemaster, fatlas, ect), ill focus on the mech's CT since its what most players will shoot at, and if they dont shield it well, it takes the least damage to drop relative to double ST kill (which doesnt even always work due to zombie builds (much less common after LFE, but they are out there as you cant use a LFE and a HGR, and ive even seen some mad3rs with STDs running say dual LBX10 or trip AC5).

As for legs, it depends on my situation. If the target is a fast light or medium, i usually go for legs since loosing a leg is a death sentence for a light mech 90% of the time, and even if it lives through it, will be rather useless for the rest of the game. Ofc, if its got known terrible hitboxes (jenner), i fire center of mass since its easy to hit and most of the time a single 60+ alfa strike that lines up will kill them (or at least neuter them to the point of being useless).

Other then that, if i have no idea what im shooting (or am engaging something past 1km) i just go for center of mass not really caring about where the damage goes. At those ranges, even with adv zoom, the odds of hitting a single comnponent on a moving target are basically non-existent, so might as well focus on weakening targets above actually killing them.

[Mechteric]

Only light mechs should be primarily targeted in the legs, and that's only because hitting them anywhere tends to not register properly anyway when they're moving fast.

But anything 45 tons or heavier you're best off hitting CT all day.

[Grus]

If I'm shooting at a IS mech that has anything with ammo requirements and they didn't put a lot of armor on their leggs, I'm going to do a leg check and see how much armor they took out. On light mech's aim for their hips, you'll hit their legs easy.

[Mcgral18]

Ghogiel, on 23 September 2017 - 02:42 AM, said:

Ammo explosions only blow out the internals and ignore armor so you don't need all that much dmg, Most ammo is going to do 150-200 dmg to a side then CT which can be enough to drop assaults. A full ton of AMS iirc being the worst case scenario where it would do 10k dmg. Doesn't work on clan omnis as they have CASE in every component.

AMS is the least damaging, actually

48 damage
But, it also ignores the damage reduction, so it's a full damage explosion towards the CT, as I understand it.